Mears, Jack Daniel’s Chevy Persevere to Top 25 in Michigan

Race/Date: LifeLock 400 – June 14, 2009 - Location: Michigan International Speedway – Brooklyn, Mich.
Start Position: 37th - Finish Position: 24th - Points Position: 21st (Maintained Position)

BROOKLYN, Mich. – Casey Mears and the Jack Daniel’s Racing team chased a car that wouldn’t respond to adjustments on pit road but still soldiered to a 24th-place finish in Sunday’s LifeLock 400 at Michigan International Speedway.

Despite the result, Mears maintained the 21st position in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship point standings. The Bakersfield, Calif., native now trails 20th-place Marcos Ambrose by 16 points and sits just 25 markers behind 19th-place Jamie McMurray. Meanwhile, Mears is a slim 32 points off of Dale Earnhardt Jr’s. 18th-place total.

The 31-year-old driver checked in with the 37th-fastest time in Friday afternoon’s qualifying session but rebounded well in race trim. The Jack Daniel’s Chevy was 16th-fastest in Saturday’s first practice and was a top-10 car following the weekend’s final warm up.

Mears was able to pick off an impressive 11 positions in the opening 36 laps of the 400-lap event. With a race that featured just three caution flags, the 43-car field began to cycle through green- flag pit stops prior to the 40-lap mark.

Once the Jack Daniel’s Chevy made its initial trip to the service lane, on lap 39, Mears raced inside the top 30 before NASCAR displayed the day’s first yellow flag on lap 75.

Despite falling a lap down to then-leader Jimmie Johnson on lap 60, the seventh-year Sprint Cup Series veteran was turning in lap times equivalent to, if not better than, drivers racing inside the top 15.

In an effort to settle the Jack Daniel’s Chevy down through Michigan’s wide, sweeping corners, Mears’ crew chief Todd Berrier called for significant chassis adjustments during the team’s next pit stop.

Back under green, now in 27th, Mears continued to race in the top 30 but still struggled entering and exiting the corners.

The field began to pit under green for the second time of the day shortly after the halfway mark. Berrier called Mears back to pit road on lap 116 for another fresh set of tires, fuel and an additional round of chassis adjustments.

Despite their best efforts, the Jack Daniel’s Chevy would not respond to the adjustments the team made on pit road. As the day wore on and the laps clicked off, Mears raced just outside the top 25.

While he was in position to get back on the lead lap on more than one occasion, the lack of caution flags forced Mears to race a lap down for the rest of the day.

But, with the final green-flag segment consuming the event’s last 44 laps, short of several teams’ fuel windows, Mears was able to capitalize when a handful of drivers ran out fuel and bring home his 11th top-25 showing of the season.

Mears’ fellow Richard Childress Racing stablemates Clint Bowyer, Kevin Harvick and Jeff Burton finished 10th, 18th and 26th, respectively.

Johnson dominated the race but ran out of fuel on the last lap and fell all the way to 22nd before the checkers flew. Mark Martin stretched his fuel mileage and earned his third victory of the season. Martin edged out fellow Chevy teammate Jeff Gordon by just under three seconds. Denny Hamlin finished third, Carl Edwards was fourth and Greg Biffle rounded out the top five.

Next weekend, the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series makes its annual visit to Northern California’s lush Sonoma Valley for the first of two road course races on the 2009 schedule.

The Toyota/Save Mart 350 from Infineon Raceway will take the green flag Sunday, June 21st at 5 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The race will be televised live on TNT beginning at 3:30 p.m. EDT and broadcast from coast-to-coast on the Performance Racing Network and Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Qualifying will be televised live on SPEED Friday, June 19th at 6:30 p.m. EDT. PRN and Sirius XM Satellite Radio will also broadcast qualifying updates live.

CASEY MEARS QUOTES

"We chased the Jack Daniel's Chevrolet all day. We had a really good car in both practices yesterday but it was a different animal when they dropped the green. The car was totally different back in traffic. We were running top-15 lap times all day but we lost a lap early and there were so few cautions that we just couldn't get our lap back. We'll go on to Sonoma and see if we can get another top-10 finish out there."